


A Perfectly Preventable Possibility

by okayokayigive



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 22:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayokayigive/pseuds/okayokayigive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was bound to happen eventually - the Doctor and Rose crossing paths with themselves. All it takes is a single encounter, on this day, in this marketplace, on this planet, to change things between them forever. (Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Perfectly Preventable Possibility

**Author's Note:**

> For the “firsts” prompt at [I Bring Life](http://i-bring-life.tumblr.com/) \- the first time the Doctor and Rose meet up with themselves.

~~

It was a day like any other - new planet, new possibilities…and for Rose, that meant new _shopping_ possibilities. Leave it to her to find the only open market place after a (relatively peaceful, by their standards) revolution. The Doctor wandered behind her as she shopped, thinking about parts he needed for the TARDIS, where they should go next…but more often than not, his thoughts drifted back to Rose. (Sometimes it was because she’d turn to shove a new purchase into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. Sometimes it was because she’d turn and smile at him, grabbing his hand to tug him along to the next stall. But sometimes it was for no good reason at all.) Thinking about how she might react to the glitter trees on Jamne, the salt pools on Iffafera Seven, the dogs on Barcelona.

They’d come to the end of the line of stalls, and turned around to head back toward the TARDIS, when Rose’s voice broke him from his reverie.

“Doctor. Doctor!” She grabbed his upper arm with the hand not clasping his. “Doctor, that’s me!”

His eyes immediately tracked her gaze to the far end of the small marketplace, where a slightly older - though still very young - Rose’s laughter rang through the air, her smile directed at a man that was clearly not him.

Well, not yet, anyway.

Now that he’d seen them, he could sense it - that little nag in the back of his brain that said “you’re already here”. 

Next to him, his current Rose shivered. “Doctor, that’s me, but that’s not you. What am I doing here? Who am I with? What’s going on?”

The Doctor didn’t answer her, his eyes fixed as he watched what could only be his future self guide a future Rose out of the flow of traffic, his hands casually and familiarly on her waist. He strained to hear, to take in all the details, as the other Doctor smirked and whispered something very intimately to her (he could have sworn it was “are you deducting?” - what, does he think he’s Sherlock Holmes now?) and leaned in for a quick but passionate kiss.

“Rose. You need to go back to the TARDIS. _Now._ ”

“But Doctor, what the hell is going on? Who is that? And why am I…kissing him?”

He turned to look her in the eye. “I’m going to find out, I promise you. I’m going to sort it. Just please…go back to the TARDIS where you’ll be safe.”

Taking a cue from the fear (and was that hurt?) in his eyes, and shuddering at the too-recent memory of Reapers, Rose nodded and headed back to the TARDIS at a fast clip.

~~

When he turned his head back from watching her run, his future self was waiting.

“Sent her back to the TARDIS, then?”

He grunted. “Don’t want to risk Reapers…or too many questions.” He looked around. “Where’s your Rose, then?”

“Same. She knows what’s happening - obviously - but I wanted to talk to you privately. Less questions, and all that. And I might be just a little bit jealous. Well, I say jealous. Can one be jealous of one’s former self?”

“Jealous? Jealous of what, exactly?”

“Of you! With the big ears and the strutting around and the leather…you’re the one she fell in love with, you know. I was…well, I suppose I was just the lucky one. Because she stayed.”

“So that kiss…that wasn’t just a ‘yay! we saved the day!’ moment, or a local custom that needed observing, or something, was it?”

“No,” the Doctor in brown let his head fall back, a grin spreading across his face, “no, it wasn’t. Not at all. After we regenerated, things changed. Really changed. For the better.”

The Doctor in black took in the information with a curt nod. “Right. So. Why are you here? Why not just head off, avoid the potential paradox?”

“I’m here to give you this.” He produced a spiky object, tips covered in multicolored balls, from somewhere inside his long coat.

“What’s this, then?”

“Well, you see, sooner or later - it’s probably happening already, to be honest - you’re going to become easily distracted. Well, I say ‘easily’. I mean ‘Rose’. You’re going to become Rose distracted, and it’s going to happen on a very regular basis. More than just getting the date wrong - and no, she still hasn’t let us live down that whole ‘one year/one day' scenario - you’ll start to miss really important things. Paradox-inducing things. Like, oh, say, landing in a marketplace on the same day your former selves are there. This will help. It’s a paradox preventer. A perfectly punctual paradox preventer. Install it in the TARDIS, and she’ll make sure you don’t land anywhere you shouldn’t. Except when you need to, anyway.”

The leather-clad Doctor had stopped his eye roll and was about to ask questions when a pair of arms suddenly wrapped around his side, nearly knocking him over with their force. 

“It’s you. It’s really, properly you.”

He couldn’t help but return the embrace. His Rose, still with him after so much time.

The future Doctor scratched the back of his neck and looked at them, the current Doctor and his future Rose. “I’ll just…give you two a minute. Rose, see you back at the TARDIS, yeah?” He strode away without waiting for an answer.

“Sorry about that. He’s…well, he’s sensitive. Gets jealous so easily.”

“He’s a bit pretty.”

“Oi!” She elbowed him in the side. “He’s you, don’t forget.”

“So…how much time do we have, then? How long until…” he gestured in the direction his future self had huffed off in.

“I can’t say. There are so many things I can’t say. You know that - Reapers and all. But I can…” she bit her lip, looking up into his eyes, before leaning in for a kiss.

His surprise at her action radiated across his body, and he had just started to respond, to move into the kiss, when she pulled away.

“I thought he was the jealous type?”

“Well, yeah. But he’s you. And you’re him. It took me a long time to understand that, to accept that. But if I can, he can too, yeah?”

“Oh, Rose.” He pulled her to him in a tight embrace and spun her in a circle. “You really stay with me? This face and the next one?”

“Forever.” In an effort to memorize the moment, to freeze it in time and keep it with her, she ran her fingers down the side of his face, his jaw, his neck. “My Doctor.”

“You know, Rose, if he’s going to be jealous anyway, we might as well give him something to be jealous about.”

The Doctor pulled her to him for a kiss, keeping his eyes on hers until the moment after their lips connected. If these were his first and last moments with Rose, with this body and her future self, he wanted to capture them with crystal-clear clarity.

They moved against each other, lips parting, hands spanning backs and digging into leather, as the cacophony of the marketplace faded around them. It wasn’t long, their first/last real kiss, or passionate - it didn’t carry the promise of more, of anything beyond the moment - but it was full of the things they were never able to say to each other, the times they never had, the connection that apparently would wait until he was a rambly hedgehog.

In what felt like an instant, the kiss had ended, and they pulled slightly away from each other, dazed but not quite willing to let go.

“You should probably…you should get back. To him, I mean. Don’t want to cause any problems for you.”

Rose nodded and looked down, resting her forehead on the lapels of his leather coat. “I just want you to know…if you had said, if I had known, I mean…”

The Doctor tilted her chin upwards with his finger. “What is it, love?”

“It’s just…if I’d known. If you’d have kissed me then - now - before you regenerated…I felt-I feel the same way. It’s you I fell in love with, Doctor. It was always you.”

He closed his eyes and let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, squeezing her tightly before dipping down for one last kiss.

“You should go, Rose. You have him to get back to, and I have you. I need to go make sure you’re all right.”

They both stepped back, full body contact giving way to arm against arm, hand against hand, fingertips clutching fingertips, until each was forced to let go of the other.

“I’ll see you soon, Rose. I promise.”

“Not if I see you first.”

In an eerie echo of her younger self’s actions, Rose turned and set off for the TARDIS at a jog. 

The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out the gizmo his future self had provided. “Distractions, huh?” he chuckled. “Yeah, I can see how that’d be a problem.”

First things first, though - time to figure out what to tell his Rose.

~~


End file.
